The Riddle - Alison Croggon [165]
Maerad’s heart sank. “Then why don’t you just take it, and give it to the Nameless One?” said Maerad bitterly. “And that will be the end of love and truth and all those things that you say don’t exist, and then you can just cover the whole earth with snow and ice. Isn’t that what you want?”
“Did you hear nothing that I said?”
“I don’t trust anything you say to me.”
“You should.” Arkan grasped Maerad’s shoulder, and she started and tried to move away, but could not: the cold pierced to her bone with a strange thrill. “We have interests in common, you and I.”
Arkan’s eyes were alight, but not with laughter; it was some other intensity she did not understand, and it frightened her. She pulled away from him. “Let me go,” she said. “It hurts.” He released his clasp. “I don’t understand,” Maerad said passionately, her fear flaming into anger. “You have murdered my dearest friends.” An ache gathered in her throat. “You sent stormdogs and iriduguls to kill us. You ordered those Jussack thugs to capture me, and they dragged me hundreds of leagues, half dead, across the winterlands. I am your prisoner, held here against my will. And then you say to me, we have things in common. We have nothing in common.”
Arkan sat down again on his throne, his face turned from Maerad, and there was silence for some time. Maerad rubbed her shoulder where he had touched it, trying to get some warmth back. At last, he stirred and spoke.
“I am not used to speaking to such as you. I do not wish you to be afraid, and I do not desire your anger. I regret your sorrow.”
“Yet everything you have done has made me full of sorrow and fear and anger,” Maerad said. “Should I now forgive you those things?”
“Your sorrow evades me,” Arkan answered. “It is prideful and full of anger against death. All those you say are dead — they are merely in another place. There is another sorrow, the sorrow of deathlessness, which humans do not understand.”
“Except the Nameless One,” said Maerad.
“Except Sharma. But he does not understand it in the way of the Elidhu. For him endless life is endless torment. It is not so with us.”
There was another pause while Maerad tried to sort out her thoughts. She remembered her vow to escape, her need to find out what Arkan knew.
“You want a Song that I don’t understand and can’t read. You know it is written on my lyre, but you say it’s no use to you. You say you know more about me than I do, but you won’t tell me what you know. If there’s no point to my being here, and you don’t want to kill me, why don’t you just let me go?”
“There is something that I do not know,” said Arkan.
“That I do know?” Maerad looked at him questioningly. “What do I know? I don’t know anything.”
“Knowing and being are not so different.” Arkan fixed Maerad with a penetrating stare. “Do you not understand that you are part of the riddle?”
“Part of what riddle?” asked Maerad with exasperation. “I thought the riddle was the Treesong.”
“Aye,” said the Winterking. “And you are part of the Treesong. It will not be free unless by your hands.”
Maerad looked at Arkan in disbelief. “What do you mean? I have to play the Song?”
“It must be released, to be given back. You are the player, and the singer as well as the seeker. Did you not know that?”
Maerad held up her maimed hand and thrust it into Arkan’s face. “I cannot play anything now,” she said passionately. “Let alone a Song that I do not understand. I am crippled, you understand? And I can’t read like Bards can. My whole life, I was a slave. But even if I weren’t, even if I were wise as wise, I still couldn’t read it. Even the most learned Bards can’t read that script.”
Maerad paused, breathing hard, and stared bitterly at Arkan. “I have failed. I have failed everyone I love, everyone who loved me. I have failed my name and I have failed the prophecies. And now I have even failed you. Why don’t you just let me go?”
“Why do you wish to leave